What's in the Bag - Rory McIlroy

11/26/2012 4:42:40 PM

Rory McIlroy's game was in tip-top fashion all week according to the Genworth Financial Statistics... (EuropeanTour)

As the golfing world applauds the performance on World Number One Rory McIlroy in winning the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai in a stunning climax to the 2012 European Tour season, we take a closer look at each department of his game.

Looking at the Genworth Financial Statistics it is easy to see where the Race to Dubai Number One has excelled, and that is everywhere, but this week on the Jumeirah Golf Estates’ Earth Course the real key seems to have been on the greens.

Putting has always been paramount to victory and often those winners each week on The European Tour rank highly in both Putts per GIR and Putts per Round, and McIlroy was no different, averaging an impressive 1.548 and 26.8 to rank first and second respectively.

That kind of form with the flat-stick will do some damage, and is an improvement on his season long numbers where he has averaged 1.752 Putts per GIR to rank 19th on Tour alongside 30 Putts per Round to rank a distant 102nd for the season.

This second figure might seem a little high, and perhaps not what you might expect from the World Number One, but when looking at this you have to take into account how many greens in regulation McIlroy hits.

In this instance he ranks fourth for the year in GIR as a result of hitting 79.2 per cent of his targets in the right number, although last week in Dubai he only ranked 25th in the field having hit 77.8 per cent.

Still impressive hitting, which could also be applied to McIlroy’s prodigious length from the tee, where he is one of only 14 players on The European Tour who have averaged over 300 yards for the season thanks to an average of 301.9 to rank tenth.

Such power with the driver can often be associated with wayward tee shots, and his numbers for the season are a little down, hitting just 60.7 per cent of the fairways to rank 100th on Tour, but when he is able to harness the big stick, like last week in Dubai where he found the short grass 73.2 per cent of the time, it is truly impressive to watch and a great advantage.

McIlroy has also shown himself to have great touch around the greens, especially from the sand, where he got up and down 100 per cent of the time in Dubai, compared with his 2012 statistics that see him rank 11th on Tour with 67.7 per cent of sand saves.

Clearly all facets of McIlroy’s game were firing last week, as you would expect of a man who shot 23-under par to win the season-ending event, but this was clearly no fluke and is a microcosm of a season that has seen him excel statistically in most areas of the game, and as a result great success has come his way.